


Not that sort of romance

by lynndyre



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:08:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4266138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin has known Harry a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not that sort of romance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoldgods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/gifts).



Having known each other for thirty odd years could have been the backdrop of a great romantic story. Love drawn out across the ages. It conjured up images of young love, blossomed from youthful infatuation, the vagaries of life coming between them. Impediments, placed by the world in the way of their love. Gentleman spies, risking death, consoling one another through loss, growing closer through the years.

All of which was shit, of course. The greatest impediment towards the epic love of Merlin and Harry Hart was simply themselves.

If it were that kind of movie, it would have begun with a tasteful romantic montage. Not a punch-up that destroyed Merlin's flat. It was the 80s, and the flat was ugly as all hell, but he held the grudge all the same. 

Merlin, not yet so named, had a facility with codebreaking and a tendency to nose about in other people's private networks. Hart thought Merlin might be useful, if he didn't end up killed. Merlin thought Hart was a git. No one fell in love at first sight.

Kingsman, for Hart, was style. Elegance. Competence. Danger. Making a mark on the world, and knowing you were the only one who could see it.

That wasn't the reality, of course, but then Merlin wasn't egotistical enough to call his own view of the world absolute or objective either. They were none of them immune to the aura of it all. And even an indifferently-faced Englishmen looked good in a tailored suit, against that backdrop of dark wood and deadly weapons.

Harry had brought him into Kingsman, but there were months and years after when Merlin never saw him. Knights worked from all over Europe, and further abroad. Merlin worked in computing, in research and development, in combat training. Sometimes, they worked together.

In the late 80s, Percival was captured. Tortured. Rescued, by Galahad and others, but came home with a death sentence all the same. All of Kingsman learnt tactics to avoid enemy blood. It was a different kind of danger, tripped fear-points in the psyche that radiation and ricin and cyanide did not. Honey-pot missions weren't a laugh anymore.

In a film, Percival- Peter- would have died picturesquely. In reality, Peter died skinny, ugly, and hurting, and it took a long time. Arthur's call for candidates smacked of being glad to wash his hands of the whole affair. Harry found people to fight. Merlin went home and drank until he could let himself cry.

The new Percival was a quiet lad with good judgment and a penchant for hidden knives. He'd been active less than two years when they lost Lancelot, and Galahad proposed Lee Unwin.

After the grenade, Harry and James had covered their exit. Merlin had carried Lee. He was still warm when Merlin laid him down, when they closed the bag over his face. He still looked like Lee, most of the damage from the pressure wave internal. Merlin had never put a recruit in a body bag before. 

It shouldn't have mattered. The job was what it was, the most dangerous in the world, one even full knights died in doing. But it stacked up, and every loss was an extra distance from the world. 

It was a short, sharp spiral down, aided by Kingsman's cellars, and it ended in shouting and fists. Harry, who should have bloody understood, looked at Merlin with his whole expression shuttered and walked away. 

It would have made a better story if he'd stopped for Harry. Instead, Merlin stopped drinking because as James' handler, he'd take James with him if he made a mistake – James who'd wanted to win fair and square, not by default. James who'd stolen the photo of Lee's wife and kid from his effects, to remind him. James who felt like maybe it should have been him. 

It shouldn't have been any of them.

In the years that followed, Merlin was never certain if Harry – if anyone – knew how close he'd come to being a drunken Scottish statistic. 

Merlin didn't drink to James' memory.

 

There was no report on Harry's body. The longer they waited, the greater likelihood it was lost in the chaos of V-day, and Kingsman would have to send someone to investigate in person. Merlin was not looking forward to the mess of Harry's estate if they couldn't produce a body. Harry had listed Merlin as his executor, which removed, at least, the need to run an immediate sweep to remove all evidence of Kingsman before an invasion of unknowing relatives.

Merlin took Eggsy with him. The boy needed it, and Harry had trusted him.

Harry's house was an artifact of eccentricity, and the smell hit Merlin hard and familiar even though he hadn't stepped foot inside in years. Eggsy darted guiltily ahead to grab a glass from the dining room table, and Merlin remembered, sharply, the taste of Harry's whiskey. He turned away.

At the foot of the stairs Merlin stopped to see if – and there he was, perched in the bathroom, waiting to stare down anyone brave enough to use the downstairs loo. Pickle used to do the same thing at headquarters, following anyone too slow to close the latch, or poking his little brown muzzle under the door.

Angrily flung loo rolls made for excellent chew toys, but Harry'd had years of teasing as to more prurient- or more scatological- motives. And he'd taken the damned dog home and put him up- 

Merlin set the spare loo roll on Pickle's shelf and patted his frozen head.

Harry's CD collection was gone. There had been a smooth wooden rack built into the bookcase, neatly organised. Now there was an ipod dock. Merlin gave it a wry look, remembering Harry's teasing, oh, before James and Lee's training even, ribbing Merlin for keeping hold of cassette tapes. And he remembered chauffeuring Harry on missions while Harry smirked at him and leaned over to push Runrig into the car's tape deck. He still had them. They still played. 

Harry's wardrobe was impeccable, as it always had been, a single cardigan in dark ivory laid across the edge of his shirt drawer, where he must have left it when changing and packing for Kentucky. Merlin fingered the weave of the cloth. Harry used to bat his eyelashes and make Merlin want to slap him, a grown man who killed people shouldn't have been able to look so soft, so vulnerable, when Merlin had never seen him show genuine weakness in his life. Merlin himself, then all pointed angles, nose, and receding hairline, had resented Harry's fluffy façade. Or maybe he'd only envied the people who never saw behind it, who didn't catch the caustic edge of Harry's anger.

He'd take the anger, now.

In Harry's office, he left the laptop alone and opened the wall behind Harry's desk. It was dressing room 3 in miniature, backups and ammunition, and a small safe. Merlin cracked it open, and found the envelope he wanted, with 'In Event Of' scrawled across the manila paper. 

He was halfway into the numbers and bequests when he reached the word that makes him pause, and read the paragraph again, because Harry sodding Hart had included an optional 'auto-icon' alternative to burial or cremation—Merlin physically pushed away from the desk, laughed and choked on it, caught between amusement and anger. He dropped his glasses onto the pages of the will, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

Fit right in, wouldn't it. Harry's corpse, perfectly dressed, sitting in the tailor shop with a tasteful waxwork face. Head between his feet like Jeremy Bentham. Merlin's eyes burned.

He needed a drink, and a sleep, and to be able to stop thinking. Instead he took a breath to steady himself, and called Eggsy down to prove to him what an utter tosser his sponsor had been. He knew his own weaknesses enough that he'd rather deal with Eggsy's grief than his own. 

Eggsy's reaction was gratifyingly intense, pronouncing Harry's plans sick, mental, and completely rank. Merlin let himself laugh. Eggsy laughed too, wet and sad, and scrubbed his sleeve under his nose. Merlin watched his face crumple. It was easier than he thought to open his arms and find words.

"It'll be alright, son."

 

Two days later, Merlin answered the call from America with half an ear, his concentration split between it and both his screens. Then his mug thudded against the desk, tea slopping over the rim. 

"Galahad. It's good to hear your voice."

Harry sounded tired, calm, and inescapably self-satisfied in his ear. 

"Merlin. Bring me home."


End file.
